Design of a Fishermen Cooperative Management System for Coastal Communities in Bayelsa State

Fishing cooperative societies in Bayelsa State, a coastal South South state heavily dependent on artisanal fishing, lack structured management tools, resulting in poor record-keeping, unequal resource distribution, and financial disputes among members. This project designs a cooperative management system tailored for artisanal fishermen cooperatives in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The system is developed using PHP and MySQL, with a lightweight offline-capable web interface deployable on low-bandwidth connections typical of Bayelsa's riverine communities. The iterative development model is applied, with three design cycles validated by 30 cooperative leaders and 70 member fishermen across Yenagoa and Ekeremor local government areas. Key features include member registration, contribution and levy tracking, equipment loan management, catch logging, profit-sharing calculations, and meeting minutes documentation. System testing evaluated record accuracy, offline data synchronisation, and user navigation ease. Results show that cooperative financial disputes decreased by 65 percent during the pilot period, attributed to transparent shared ledger access. The study highlights the need for multilingual interface support, including Ijaw language prompts, to improve inclusivity. This research provides a scalable cooperative governance tool applicable across Nigeria's oil-producing coastal communities, supporting livelihood resilience independent of petroleum dependency. Keywords: cooperative management, fishermen, Bayelsa State, artisanal fishing, offline system